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Best Famous Describes Poems

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Written by Robert Pinsky | Create an image from this poem

Impossible To Tell

 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing.
"Bashõ" He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana After the plant some grateful students gave him, Maybe in appreciation of his guidance Threading a long night through the rules and channels Of their collaborative linking-poem Scored in their teacher's heart: live, rigid, fluid Like passages etched in a microscopic cicuit.
Elliot had in his memory so many jokes They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture Inside his brain, one so much making another It was impossible to tell them all: In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana.
Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother, Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child And her new baby in a squalid apartment Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors.
She tells the child she's going to kill herself.
She broods, she rages.
Hoping to distract her, The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations Of different people in the building, he jokes, He feels if he keeps her alive until the father Gets home from work, they'll be okay till morning.
It's laughter versus the bedroom and the pills.
What is he in his efforts but a courtier? Impossible to tell his whole delusion.
In the first months when I had moved back East From California and had to leave a message On Bob's machine, I used to make a habit Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through, I would pretend that I forgot the punchline, Or make believe that I was interrupted-- As though he'd be so eager to hear the end He'd have to call me back.
The joke was Elliot's, More often than not.
The doctors made the blunder That killed him some time later that same year.
One day when I got home I found a message On my machine from Bob.
He had a story About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short, One day while walking along the street together They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them, And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest.
Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy, Impossible to tell--a dead-end challenge.
But here it is, as Elliot told it to me: The dead man's widow came to the rabbis weeping, Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him.
Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not.
But the short rabbi told her to bring the body Into the study house, and ordered the shutters Closed so the room was night-dark.
Then he prayed Over the body, chanting a secret blessing Out of Kabala.
"Arise and breathe," he shouted; But nothing happened.
The body lay still.
So then The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles And danced around the body, chanting and praying In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic.
He prayed In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes Seemed not to touch the floor.
With one last prayer Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man's face.
Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture And said, "Arise and breathe!" And still the body Lay as before.
Impossible to tell In words how Elliot's eyebrows flailed and snorted Like shaggy mammoths as--the Chinese widow Granting permission--the little rabbi sang The blessing for performing a circumcision And removed the dead man's foreskin, chanting blessings In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse From head to foot, and with a final prayer In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion, He seized the dead man's head and kissed the lips And dropped it again and leaping back commanded, "Arise and breathe!" The corpse lay still as ever.
At this, as when Bashõ's disciples wind Along the curving spine that links the renga Across the different voices, each one adding A transformation according to the rules Of stasis and repetition, all in order And yet impossible to tell beforehand, Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer, Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching, A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: "Hoo boy!" he says, "Now that's what I call really dead.
" O mortal Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal Lords of the underground and afterlife, Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto, What has a brilliant, living soul to do with Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers, Our languages don't touch you, you're like that mother Whose small child entertained her to beg her life.
Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi, The one who washed his hands of all those capers Right at the outset.
Or maybe he became The author of these lines, a one-man renga The one for whom it seems to be impossible To tell a story straight.
It was a routine Procedure.
When it was finished the physicians Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded, But Elliot wouldn't wake up for maybe an hour, They should go eat.
The two of them loved to bicker In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish, On Sandra's to some Sicilian dialect.
He used to scold her endlessly for smoking.
When she got back from dinner with their children The doctors had to tell them about the mistake.
Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book.
Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent, Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer.
But the Universal is the goal of jokes, Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures Toward their preposterous Ithaca.
There's one A journalist told me.
He heard it while a hero Of the South African freedom movement was speaking To elderly Jews.
The speaker's own right arm Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers.
He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots For the ANC--a group the old Jews feared As "in with the Arabs.
" But they started weeping As the old one-armed fighter told them their country Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote Could make a country their children could return to From London and Chicago.
The moved old people Applauded wildly, and the speaker's friend Whispered to the journalist, "It's the Belgian Army Joke come to life.
" I wish I could tell it To Elliot.
In the Belgian Army, the feud Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious, So out of hand the army could barely function.
Finally one commander assembled his men In one great room, to deal with things directly.
They stood before him at attention.
"All Flemings," He ordered, "to the left wall.
" Half the men Clustered to the left.
"Now all Walloons," he ordered, "Move to the right.
" An equal number crowded Against the right wall.
Only one man remained At attention in the middle: "What are you, soldier?" Saluting, the man said, "Sir, I am a Belgian.
" "Why, that's astonishing, Corporal--what's your name?" Saluting again, "Rabinowitz," he answered: A joke that seems at first to be a story About the Jews.
But as the renga describes Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl, So in the joke, just under the raucous music Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow, Over the banana tree the moon in autumn-- Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.


Written by Mark Strand | Create an image from this poem

The Story Of Our Lives

 1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
There is no one there, no sound of anything.
The tress are heavy with leaves, the parked cars never move.
We keep turning the pages, hoping for something, something like mercy or change, a black line that would bind us or keep us apart.
The way it is, it would seem the book of our lives is empty.
The furniture in the room is never shifted, and the rugs become darker each time our shadows pass over them.
It is almost as if the room were the world.
We sit beside each other on the couch, reading about the couch.
We say it is ideal.
It is ideal.
2 We are reading the story of our lives, as though we were in it, as though we had written it.
This comes up again and again.
In one of the chapters I lean back and push the book aside because the book says it is what I am doing.
I lean back and begin to write about the book.
I write that I wish to move beyond the book.
Beyond my life into another life.
I put the pen down.
The book says: "He put the pen down and turned and watched her reading the part about herself falling in love.
" The book is more accurate than we can imagine.
I lean back and watch you read about the man across the street.
They built a house there, and one day a man walked out of it.
You fell in love with him because you knew that he would never visit you, would never know you were waiting.
Night after night you would say that he was like me.
I lean back and watch you grow older without me.
Sunlight falls on your silver hair.
The rugs, the furniture, seem almost imaginary now.
"She continued to read.
She seemed to consider his absence of no special importance, as someone on a perfect day will consider the weather a failure because it did not change his mind.
" You narrow your eyes.
You have the impulse to close the book which describes my resistance: how when I lean back I imagine my life without you, imagine moving into another life, another book.
It describes your dependence on desire, how the momentary disclosures of purpose make you afraid.
The book describes much more than it should.
It wants to divide us.
3 This morning I woke and believed there was no more to to our lives than the story of our lives.
When you disagreed, I pointed to the place in the book where you disagreed.
You fell back to sleep and I began to read those mysterious parts you used to guess at while they were being written and lose interest in after they became part of the story.
In one of them cold dresses of moonlight are draped over the chairs in a man's room.
He dreams of a woman whose dresses are lost, who sits in a garden and waits.
She believes that love is a sacrifice.
The part describes her death and she is never named, which is one of the things you could not stand about her.
A little later we learn that the dreaming man lives in the new house across the street.
This morning after you fell back to sleep I began to turn the pages early in the book: it was like dreaming of childhood, so much seemed to vanish, so much seemed to come to life again.
I did not know what to do.
The book said: "In those moments it was his book.
A bleak crown rested uneasily on his head.
He was the brief ruler of inner and outer discord, anxious in his own kingdom.
" 4 Before you woke I read another part that described your absence and told how you sleep to reverse the progress of your life.
I was touched by my own loneliness as I read, knowing that what I feel is often the crude and unsuccessful form of a story that may never be told.
"He wanted to see her naked and vulnerable, to see her in the refuse, the discarded plots of old dreams, the costumes and masks of unattainable states.
It was as if he were drawn irresistably to failure.
" It was hard to keep reading.
I was tired and wanted to give up.
The book seemed aware of this.
It hinted at changing the subject.
I waited for you to wake not knowing how long I waited, and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing like a stream of sighs and I heard the shiver of leaves in the trees outside the window.
It would be in the book.
Everything would be there.
I looked at your face and I read the eyes, the nose, the mouth .
.
.
5 If only there were a perfect moment in the book; if only we could live in that moment, we could being the book again as if we had not written it, as if we were not in it.
But the dark approaches to any page are too numerous and the escapes are too narrow.
We read through the day.
Each page turning is like a candle moving through the mind.
Each moment is like a hopeless cause.
If only we could stop reading.
"He never wanted to read another book and she kept staring into the street.
The cars were still there, the deep shade of trees covered them.
The shades were drawn in the new house.
Maybe the man who lived there, the man she loved, was reading the story of another life.
She imagine a bare parlor, a cold fireplace, a man sitting writing a letter to a woman who has sacrificed her life for love.
" If there were a perfect moment in the book, it would be the last.
The book never discusses the causes of love.
It claims confusion is a necessary good.
It never explains.
It only reveals.
6 The day goes on.
We study what we remember.
We look into the mirror across the room.
We cannot bear to be alone.
The book goes on.
"They became silent and did not know how to begin the dialogue which was necessary.
It was words that created divisions in the first place, that created loneliness.
They waited they would turn the pages, hoping something would happen.
They would patch up their lives in secret: each defeat forgiven because it could not be tested, each pain rewarded because it was unreal.
They did nothing.
" 7 The book will not survive.
We are the living proof of that.
It is dark outside, in the room it is darker.
I hear your breathing.
You are asking me if I am tired, if I want to keep reading.
Yes, I am tired.
Yes, I want to keep reading.
I say yes to everything.
You cannot hear me.
"They sat beside each other on the couch.
They were the copies, the tired phantoms of something they had been before.
The attitudes they took were jaded.
They stared into the book and were horrified by their innocence, their reluctance to give up.
They sat beside each other on the couch.
They were determined to accept the truth.
Whatever it was they would accept it.
The book would have to be written and would have to be read.
They are the book and they are nothing else.
Written by Maggie Estep | Create an image from this poem

Bad Day At The Beauty Salon

 I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with
dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull.
I needed a job, but first, I needed a haircut.
So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.
I'm gonna get a hairdo.
I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted ***** red and rake them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul.
So I go in the beauty salon.
This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra sits me down and starts chopping my hair: "Girlfriend," she says, "what the hell you got growing outta your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you want me to touch that ****, whadya got in there, sandwiches?" I just go: "I'm sorry.
" She starts snipping my carefully cultivated Johnny Lydon post-Pistols hairdo.
My foul little dreadlocks are flying around all over the place but I'm not looking in the mirror cause I just don't want to know.
"So what's your name anyway?" My stylist demands then.
"Uh, Maggie.
" "Maggie? Well, that's an okay name, but my name is Suzy.
" "Yeah, so?" "Yeah so it ain't just Suzy S.
U.
Z.
Y, I spell it S.
U.
Z.
E.
E, the extra "e" is for extra Suzee.
" I nod emphatically.
Suzee tells me when she's not busy chopping hair, she works as an exotic dancer at night to support her boyfriend named Rocco.
Suzee loves Rocco, she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him: "6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich.
" Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk head.
She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the mirror: "Holy ****, I'm bald.
" "Holy ****, baby, you're bald.
" Suzee says, finally opening her eyes and then gasping.
All I've got left is little post-nuke clumps of orange fuzz.
And I'll never get a receptionist job now.
But Suzy waves her manicured finger in my face: "Don't you worry, baby, I'm gonna get you a job at the dancing club.
" "What?" "Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer.
" That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists I'm gonna love getting naked for a living.
None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm bald so I go home and get my best panties.
Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps, paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax me.
8pm that night I take the stage.
I'm bald, I'm drunk, and by god, I'm naked.
HOLY **** I'M NAKED IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE RECURRING NIGHTMARES WE ALL HAVE ABOUT BEING BUTT NAKED IN PUBLIC, I AM NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS.
A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by sticking dollars in my garter belt.
My disheveled pubic hairs stand at full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close.
Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick 10 bucks in my garter.
I saunter over.
I'm teetering around unrhythmically, I'm the surliest, unsexiest dancer that ever go-go across this hemisphere.
The bald guy looks down into his beer, he'd much rather look at that than at my pubic mound which has now formed into one vicious spike so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my crotch.
I stand there weaving through the air.
The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn.
Madonna's song Borderline is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight: "BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE.
" And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway? "LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE" What? Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue crazy, horny, naked and blind? What? There's a glitch in the tape and it starts to skip.
"Borderl.
.
.
ooop.
.
.
.
.
Borderl.
.
.
.
ooop.
.
.
Borderlin.
.
.
.
.
ooop" I stumble and twist my ankle.
My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making me twitch with pain.
My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap.
So there I am.
Butt naked on all fours.
But before I have time to regain my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip club manager finger at me and goes: "You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired.
" I stand up.
"Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker, pal.
" I peel off one of my pumps and throw it in the direction of his fat head then I get the hell out of there.
A few days later I run into Suzee on Avenue A.
Turns out she got fired for getting me a job there in the first place.
But she was completely undaunted, she dragged me up to this wig store on 14th Street, bought me a mouse brown shag wig, then got us both telemarketing jobs on Wall Street.
And I never went to a beauty salon again.
Written by Denise Duhamel | Create an image from this poem

Yes

 According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette 
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
a.
) I don't know.
b.
) If you say so.
c.
) If it will please you.
d.
) I hope I have said yes unenthusiastically enough for you to realize I mean no.
You can imagine the confusion surrounding our movie dates, the laundry, who will take out the garbage and when.
I remind him I'm an American, that all has yeses sound alike to me.
I tell him here in America we have shrinks who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser.
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!" when they don't get their way.
I tell him, in America we have a popular book, When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
"Should I get you a copy?" I ask.
He says yes, but I think he means "If it will please you," i.
e.
"I won't read it.
" "I'm trying," I tell him, "but you have to try too.
" "Yes," he says, then makes tampo, a sulking that the book Culture Shock describes as "subliminal hostility .
.
.
withdrawal of customary cheerfulness in the presence of the one who has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right, "to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out, but by showing concern about the wounded person's well-being.
" Forget it, I think, even though I know if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog-- foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming of doors.
Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy that I bought on Canal Street years before my husband and I started dating.
"The real Kwan Yin is in Manila," he tells me.
"She's called Nuestra Señora de Guia.
Her Asian features prove Christianity was in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived.
" My husband's telling me this tells me he's sorry.
Kwan Yin seems to wink, congratulating me--my short prayer worked.
"Will you love me forever?" I ask, then study his lips, wondering if I'll be able to decipher what he means by his yes.
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

WINTER JOURNEY OVER THE HARTZ MOUNTAINS

 [The following explanation is necessary, in order 
to make this ode in any way intelligible.
The Poet is supposed to leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains.
The ode alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar manner, the naturally happy disposition of the Poet himself and the unhappiness of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road and the dreariness of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot by the distant sight of a town, a very vague allusion to which is made in the third strophe; it recalls the hunting party on which his companions have gone; and after an address to Love, concludes by a contrast between the unexplored recesses of the highest peak of the Hartz and the metalliferous veins of its smaller brethren.
] LIKE the vulture Who on heavy morning clouds With gentle wing reposing Looks for his prey,-- Hover, my song! For a God hath Unto each prescribed His destined path, Which the happy one Runs o'er swiftly To his glad goal: He whose heart cruel Fate hath contracted, Struggles but vainly Against all the barriers The brazen thread raises, But which the harsh shears Must one day sever.
Through gloomy thickets Presseth the wild deer on, And with the sparrows Long have the wealthy Settled themselves in the marsh.
Easy 'tis following the chariot That by Fortune is driven, Like the baggage that moves Over well-mended highways After the train of a prince.
But who stands there apart? In the thicket, lost is his path; Behind him the bushes Are closing together, The grass springs up again, The desert engulphs him.
Ah, who'll heal his afflictions, To whom balsam was poison, Who, from love's fullness, Drank in misanthropy only? First despised, and now a despiser, He, in secret, wasteth All that he is worth, In a selfishness vain.
If there be, on thy psaltery, Father of Love, but one tone That to his ear may be pleasing, Oh, then, quicken his heart! Clear his cloud-enveloped eyes Over the thousand fountains Close by the thirsty one In the desert.
Thou who createst much joy, For each a measure o'erflowing, Bless the sons of the chase When on the track of the prey, With a wild thirsting for blood, Youthful and joyous Avenging late the injustice Which the peasant resisted Vainly for years with his staff.
But the lonely one veil Within thy gold clouds! Surround with winter-green, Until the roses bloom again, The humid locks, Oh Love, of thy minstrel! With thy glimmering torch Lightest thou him Through the fords when 'tis night, Over bottomless places On desert-like plains; With the thousand colours of morning Gladd'nest his bosom; With the fierce-biting storm Bearest him proudly on high; Winter torrents rush from the cliffs,-- Blend with his psalms; An altar of grateful delight He finds in the much-dreaded mountain's Snow-begirded summit, Which foreboding nations Crown'd with spirit-dances.
Thou stand'st with breast inscrutable, Mysteriously disclosed, High o'er the wondering world, And look'st from clouds Upon its realms and its majesty, Which thou from the veins of thy brethren Near thee dost water.
1777.


Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

ANNIVERSARY SONG

 [This little song describes the different members 
of the party just spoken of.
] WHY pacest thou, my neighbour fair, The garden all alone? If house and land thou seek'st to guard, I'd thee as mistress own.
My brother sought the cellar-maid, And suffered her no rest; She gave him a refreshing draught, A kiss, too, she impress'd.
My cousin is a prudent wight, The cook's by him ador'd; He turns the spit round ceaselessly, To gain love's sweet reward.
We six together then began A banquet to consume, When lo! a fourth pair singing came, And danced into the room.
Welcome were they,--and welcome too Was a fifth jovial pair.
Brimful of news, and stored with tales And jests both new and rare.
For riddles, spirit, raillery, And wit, a place remain'd; A sixth pair then our circle join'd, And so that prize was gain'd.
And yet to make us truly blest, One miss'd we, and full sore; A true and tender couple came,-- We needed them no more.
The social banquet now goes on, Unchequer'd by alloy; The sacred double-numbers then Let us at once enjoy! 1802.
Written by Victor Hugo | Create an image from this poem

CORNFLOWERS

 ("Tandis que l'étoile inodore.") 
 
 {XXXII.} 


 While bright but scentless azure stars 
 Be-gem the golden corn, 
 And spangle with their skyey tint 
 The furrows not yet shorn; 
 While still the pure white tufts of May 
 Ape each a snowy ball,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, and haste 
 To gather ere they fall! 
 
 Nowhere the sun of Spain outshines 
 Upon a fairer town 
 Than Peñafiel, or endows 
 More richly farming clown; 
 Nowhere a broader square reflects 
 Such brilliant mansions, tall,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Nowhere a statelier abbey rears 
 Dome huger o'er a shrine, 
 Though seek ye from old Rome itself 
 To even Seville fine. 
 Here countless pilgrims come to pray 
 And promenade the Mall,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Where glide the girls more joyfully 
 Than ours who dance at dusk, 
 With roses white upon their brows, 
 With waists that scorn the busk? 
 Mantillas elsewhere hide dull eyes— 
 Compared with these, how small! 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 A blossom in a city lane, 
 Alizia was our pride, 
 And oft the blundering bee, deceived, 
 Came buzzing to her side— 
 But, oh! for one that felt the sting, 
 And found, 'neath honey, gall— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Young, haughty, from still hotter lands, 
 A stranger hither came— 
 Was he a Moor or African, 
 Or Murcian known to fame? 
 None knew—least, she—or false or true, 
 The name by which to call. 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Alizia asked not his degree, 
 She saw him but as Love, 
 And through Xarama's vale they strayed, 
 And tarried in the grove,— 
 Oh! curses on that fatal eve, 
 And on that leafy hall! 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 The darkened city breathed no more; 
 The moon was mantled long, 
 Till towers thrust the cloudy cloak 
 Upon the steeples' throng; 
 The crossway Christ, in ivy draped, 
 Shrank, grieving, 'neath the pall,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 But while, alone, they kept the shade, 
 The other dark-eyed dears 
 Were murmuring on the stifling air 
 Their jealous threats and fears; 
 Alizia was so blamed, that time, 
 Unheeded rang the call: 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Although, above, the hawk describes 
 The circle round the lark, 
 It sleeps, unconscious, and our lass 
 Had eyes but for her spark— 
 A spark?—a sun! 'Twas Juan, King! 
 Who wears our coronal,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 A love so far above one's state 
 Ends sadly. Came a black 
 And guarded palanquin to bear 
 The girl that ne'er comes back; 
 By royal writ, some nunnery 
 Still shields her from us all 
 Away, ye merry maids, and haste 
 To gather ere they fall! 
 
 H. L. WILLIAMS 


 




Written by Steve Kowit | Create an image from this poem

The Grammar Lesson

 A noun's a thing.
A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz" of and with are prepositions.
The's an article, a can's a noun, a noun's a thing.
A verb's the thing it does.
A can can roll - or not.
What isn't was or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz" is present tense.
While words like our and us are pronouns - i.
e.
it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.
Is is a helping verb.
It helps because filled isn't a full verb.
Can's what our owns in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.
" See? There's almost nothing to it.
Just memorize these rules.
.
.
or write them down! A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

LILYS MENAGERIE

 [Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which 
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change 
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images.
"] THERE'S no menagerie, I vow, Excels my Lily's at this minute; She keeps the strangest creatures in it, And catches them, she knows not how.
Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave, And their clipp'd pinions wildly wave,-- Poor princes, who must all endure The pangs of love that nought can cure.
What is the fairy's name?--Is't Lily?--Ask not me! Give thanks to Heaven if she's unknown to thee.
Oh what a cackling, what a shrieking, When near the door she takes her stand, With her food-basket in her hand! Oh what a croaking, what a squeaking! Alive all the trees and the bushes appear, While to her feet whole troops draw near; The very fish within, the water clear Splash with impatience and their heads protrude; And then she throws around the food With such a look!--the very gods delighting (To say nought of beasts).
There begins, then, a biting, A picking, a pecking, a sipping, And each o'er the legs of another is tripping, And pushing, and pressing, and flapping, And chasing, and fuming, and snapping, And all for one small piece of bread, To which, though dry, her fair hands give a taste, As though it in ambrosia had been plac'd.
And then her look! the tone With which she calls: Pipi! Pipi! Would draw Jove's eagle from his throne; Yes, Venus' turtle doves, I wean, And the vain peacock e'en, Would come, I swear, Soon as that tone had reach'd them through the air.
E'en from a forest dark had she Enticed a bear, unlick'd, ill-bred, And, by her wiles alluring, led To join the gentle company, Until as tame as they was he: (Up to a certain point, be't understood!) How fair, and, ah, how good She seem'd to be! I would have drain'd my blood To water e'en her flow'rets sweet.
"Thou sayest: I! Who? How? And where?"-- Well, to be plain, good Sirs--I am the bear; In a net-apron, caught, alas! Chain'd by a silk-thread at her feet.
But how this wonder came to pass I'll tell some day, if ye are curious; Just now, my temper's much too furious.
Ah, when I'm in the corner plac'd, And hear afar the creatures snapping, And see the flipping and the flapping, I turn around With growling sound, And backward run a step in haste, And look around With growling sound.
Then run again a step in haste, And to my former post go round.
But suddenly my anger grows, A mighty spirit fills my nose, My inward feelings all revolt.
A creature such as thou! a dolt! Pipi, a squirrel able nuts to crack! I bristle up my shaggy back Unused a slave to be.
I'm laughed at by each trim and upstart tree To scorn.
The bowling-green I fly, With neatly-mown and well-kept grass: The box makes faces as I pass,-- Into the darkest thicket hasten I, Hoping to 'scape from the ring, Over the palings to spring! Vainly I leap and climb; I feel a leaden spell.
That pinions me as well, And when I'm fully wearied out in time, I lay me down beside some mock-cascade, And roll myself half dead, and foam, and cry, And, ah! no Oreads hear my sigh, Excepting those of china made! But, ah, with sudden power In all my members blissful feelings reign! 'Tis she who singeth yonder in her bower! I hear that darling, darling voice again.
The air is warm, and teems with fragrance clear, Sings she perchance for me alone to hear? I haste, and trample down the shrubs amain; The trees make way, the bushes all retreat, And so--the beast is lying at her feet.
She looks at him: "The monster's droll enough! He's, for a bear, too mild, Yet, for a dog, too wild, So shaggy, clumsy, rough!" Upon his back she gently strokes her foot; He thinks himself in Paradise.
What feelings through his seven senses shoot! But she looks on with careless eyes.
I lick her soles, and kiss her shoes, As gently as a bear well may; Softly I rise, and with a clever ruse Leap on her knee.
--On a propitious day She suffers it; my ears then tickles she, And hits me a hard blow in wanton play; I growl with new-born ecstasy; Then speaks she in a sweet vain jest, I wot "Allons lout doux! eh! la menotte! Et faites serviteur Comme un joli seigneur.
" Thus she proceeds with sport and glee; Hope fills the oft-deluded beast; Yet if one moment he would lazy be, Her fondness all at once hath ceas'd.
She doth a flask of balsam-fire possess, Sweeter than honey bees can make, One drop of which she'll on her finger take, When soften'd by his love and faithfulness, Wherewith her monster's raging thirst to slake; Then leaves me to myself, and flies at last, And I, unbound, yet prison'd fast By magic, follow in her train, Seek for her, tremble, fly again.
The hapless creature thus tormenteth she, Regardless of his pleasure or his woe; Ha! oft half-open'd does she leave the door for me, And sideways looks to learn if I will fly or no.
And I--Oh gods! your hands alone Can end the spell that's o'er me thrown; Free me, and gratitude my heart will fill; And yet from heaven ye send me down no aid-- Not quite in vain doth life my limbs pervade: I feel it! Strength is left me still.
1775.
Written by Jorie Graham | Create an image from this poem

Mind

 The slow overture of rain, 
each drop breaking 
without breaking into 
the next, describes 
the unrelenting, syncopated 
mind.
Not unlike the hummingbirds imagining their wings to be their heart, and swallows believing the horizon to be a line they lift and drop.
What is it they cast for? The poplars, advancing or retreating, lose their stature equally, and yet stand firm, making arrangements in order to become imaginary.
The city draws the mind in streets, and streets compel it from their intersections where a little belongs to no one.
It is what is driven through all stationary portions of the world, gravity's stake in things, the leaves, pressed against the dank window of November soil, remain unwelcome till transformed, parts of a puzzle unsolvable till the edges give a bit and soften.
See how then the picture becomes clear, the mind entering the ground more easily in pieces, and all the richer for it.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things